Sawhorses are well known tools used by carpenters and others for woodworking purposes. Each sawhorse typically comprises a horizontal cross-member supported at each end by a pair of legs. The legs are set at an angle to the cross-member to make the sawhorse self-supporting. Two sawhorses are usually spaced apart from one another during use so that cut lumber, or other components on which the carpenter might be working, can be laid across the cross-members and be supported thereby.
At one time many sawhorses would have been individually constructed by a carpenter from suitably sized pieces of lumber nailed or otherwise fixed together. Today, it is more common to use a plurality of preformed brackets, often sold together in kit form, to connect the cross-member and legs of the sawhorse together. Such sawhorse bracket kits have a number of advantages over traditional sawhorses. They require no special skill in mating the legs to the cross-member or in nailing them together--only a simple assembly operation is required. In addition, the sawhorse may be more easily disassembled when this is desired.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,042,144 to Larson discloses a bracket made of a generally planar plate having a slot for receiving the cross-member and two angled sides for receiving the legs. Nails or screws extend through the bracket and into the cross-member and legs for assembling them together into a completed unit, such as a sawhorse. The brackets are used in opposed pairs on either side of the legs. Threaded members are used to clamp the opposed brackets together.
While the bracket kit of Larson can be used to construct a sawhorse, it has a number of disadvantages. First, the nails used to fix the cross-member to the bracket are angled downwardly and are unsupported over a portion of their length before entering the cross-member, i.e. there is a small gap between the cross-member and the bracket flange through which each nail passes. Thus, these nails tend to work loose over time. The user of the sawhorse often has to keep pounding these nails back into place and the nails stay in place for progressively shorter lengths of time. This is annoying. Longer nails can be used, but there is a limit as to how many times this can be done without weakening the structural integrity of the cross-member. As a result, the Larson bracket yields a sawhorse which does not remain firmly fixed together as long as one would like.
In addition, the legs of the sawhorse are secured to the bracket in a fixed manner, basically making the sawhorse non-collapsible. If one wishes to transport the sawhorse, e.g. from one job site to another, and the sawhorse is too big for the vehicle being used, it is necessary to disassemble the sawhorse by removing the legs so that individual components can be stacked together. Of course, this also requires that the sawhorse be reassembled when the new job site is reached. This process is time-consuming and undesirable. In addition, frequent disassembly of the legs gradually taps out the screw or nail holes in the legs, leading to some of the same problems of secure attachment discussed above for the cross-member.
Other brackets have been disclosed for supporting a horizontal cross-member of a sawhorse or similar device. Some of these other brackets often include collapsible legs in which the legs are no longer pieces of lumber but are formed as part of the bracket. However, such brackets are more complex than a simple planar plate, use elaborate pivot structures in some cases, and are, as a result, more expensive to manufacture or buy.